deviantgene

He started at the empty page. Wait. Not he. I. This is my story.

But am I so different from him? Where do I end and he begins. The He in question, of course, being the creative artist in me who did not care about food or money or kid’s school education or any of the thousand minutiae of life.

But as I write this, I realise something, these myriad things in life are the true compost of what ultimately become a great story or a great poem.

The page is not looking so empty now, but I still feel it accusing me of something. Of infidelity. Of having forgotten how much I loved words and how words make stories and stories make life.I cannot do without them. The words. The stories. So why do I feel that this empty page is accusing me? It is almost like I can sense a silent (I had to pause here, because I forgot the word, so bear with me as I repeat myself..) almost a silent rebuke, reprimand, reproach. (In case you did not get it, I took a pause here to google exactly the word I had in  mind)

That is my fear. That is my nightmare. What if words have started deserting me. It scares me. It terriufies me. I try and lure them back with gentle promises of time spent and a love which shall no longer go unrequieted.

Because the truth is

I need the words more than they need me.

. Who am I without words. What am I. I don’t understand anything else. I understand words. And if words leave me then what will I be. No matter what has been happening in my life, the words have always been there. They do not care how much I earn or whether I am fat or thin or what my day looks like, or how much money I make.All they care about is that I pay them a visit. Every once in a while.

You know, I once had the good fortune of making to words fall in love too. Mycelial and Factory had never looked at each other with the kind of longing they did , when I set them up together. Mycelial Factory.

Come to think of it, I don’t know how many word pairs I have played cupid to over the years.

The writer does not make up the words. Words make up the writer.

And now this whole paragraph stands accusatory. Why did I forget them? The words. Books can be read or heard. Words can be said, or written. Being too busy with life is certainly not an excuse for forgetting words. Do you know, “Doomscrolling” is still upset with me because I forgot his (yes, the word identifies as male), birthday.

Do not get me started on engineered serendipity or manufactured consent. They scream at me every time I see them on page. Look, they say – We had never met each other till someone put us together. But once you had read us together, we were inseparable in your mind. Chomsky and Foucault and Russian Fairy tales and whatever else you decided to pick up, you were with us.

So when did we become a 15s wordart caption on an Instagram video?

Or merely subtitles in a movie?

I sense their anger. Their frustration.

This is what terrifies me. That I will not be able to give the words the life and the meaning they want. And eventually, they will desert me.

And on the day the last word flees

I will be no one.